Lowe's Home Improvement
Lowe's is a chain of home improvement stores. It is the second-largest home improvement store (behind The Home Depot), and is the seventh-largest retailer. It was founded in 1946 by Lucius Lowe. It operates stores in the US, Canada, and Australia (joint-venture with Woolworths Limited). History The first Lowe's store, Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware, was first opened in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina in 1921 by Lucius Smith Lowe (1879–1940). After Lowe died in 1940, the business was inherited by his daughter Ruth, who sold the company to her brother Jim that same year. Jim took on Carl Buchan as a partner in 1943. Buchan anticipated the dramatic increase in construction after World War II, and under his management, the store focused on hardware and building materials. Before then, the product mix had also included notions, dry goods, horse tack, snuff, produce, and groceries. The company bought a second location in Sparta, North Carolina in 1949. Lowe and Buchan differed on expanding the company to new areas and they split in 1952 with Buchan (himself) taking control of the hardware and building supply business and Lowe taking other joint ventures the two controlled (including a car dealership). Buchan became the sole owner of Lowe's. In 1954, Lowe started the Lowes Foods grocery store chain. By 1955, Buchan quickly expanded the company by opening stores in the North Carolina cities of Asheville, Charlotte, and Durham. More stores opened through the 1950s. In 1961, Buchan died of a heart attack at age 44. His five-man executive team, which included Robert Strickland and Leonard Herring, took the company public in 1961. By 1962, Lowe's operated 21 stores and reported annual revenues of $32 million. Lowe's began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1979. Lowe's suffered in the 1980s due to market conditions and increasing competition from the new big-box store chain, The Home Depot. For a while, Lowe's resisted adopting the mega-store format partly because its management believed the smaller towns where Lowe's mostly operated would not even support huge stores. However, Lowe's eventually had to adopt the big-box format in order to survive. Today, most Lowe's stores are part of the big-box variety, although some classic format stores remain in smaller markets. Lowe's has since grown nationally, as it was aided by the purchase of the Renton, Washington-based Eagle Hardware & Garden company in 1999. It is now the 2nd largest home improvement store chain in North America and has begun expanding outside the United States. The first store outside of United States was in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. According to their website, Lowe's has operated/serviced more than 2,355 locations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico alone. On November 5, 2018, Lowe's announced that it will be closing 51 under-performing stores, 20 stores in the United States and 31 in Canada under the Lowe's and Rona names by February 2019. In November 2018, Lowe's announced that it will close all stores in Mexico in the future. See also * List of Lowe's Home Improvement Locations Category:Discount stores Category:Department stores Category:Retailers by type Category:Retailers Category:Home Improvement Stores Category:Big-Box Stores